STORY BEHIND THE ART OF Kerri Weller
25th Annual International
American Society of Botanical Artists and Wave Hill
Eastern Prickly Pear Cactus
Opuntia humifusa
The discovery …
Years ago, I was teaching an art journaling class at a public garden in Ottawa, Canada’s capital, where I live. The Ottawa Field-Naturalists’ Club had created a beautiful “backyard garden” there featuring regional native plants. A tiny patch of Opuntia humifusa was tucked into the Rock Garden. I found it incredible that a cactus could survive the northern climate of Ottawa, zoned 5 for plant hardiness, and wished to know more.
About …
I learned there are four species of cacti native to Canada! Growing in the wild, all are at the northern limits of their distribution.
Although more widespread in the eastern United States, the species Opuntia humifusa is designated as an endangered native plant in Canada, by COSEWIC, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada. It’s found only in the wild in southern Ontario on a few sand spits along the shore of Lake Erie. With temperatures moderated by the Great Lakes, this cactus can survive the winter and thrives in its dry, sunny habitat in summer. Development, shoreline erosion and harsh winter storms have caused habitat loss.
Commonly known as Eastern prickly pear, Opuntia humifusa is a perennial succulent cactus with a low, spreading habit. Its segmented pads grow horizontally or upright across a dry, sandy environment.
Outwardly unfriendly, its flat oblong pads, are armed with fearsome looking long, sharp, white spines. Their location exclusively along the outer edge of the pads is the key to identifying this Opuntia as the species humifusa. Patterned across the pads are fine, short tufts of barbed bristles called glochids. Brush by Opuntia and your skin will feel on fire, as the glochids shoot straight through your garden gloves and embed the tiniest of fishhook barbs into your skin. I’ve heard household glue helps to extract them!
In June, Opuntia humifusa, turns on the charm when its exquisite yellow flowers bloom briefly along the edges of its mature pads. Their development into plump edible fruit, the pears, is stunted by the short growing season of this northern location.
A curious and challenging plant to paint …
My original plan was to feature the enchanting flowers. But as I made detailed drawings and color studies on site, I found the pads, with their linear and branching growth habit, to be even more intriguing.
I like to paint in oils on linen mounted on a panel. Beginning with a red umber underpainting, I marked in the shapes and tonal values of all the elements, particularly the light and shadow pattern across the pads, precisely pinpointing the location of the glochids and spines. This meticulous underpainting allows me to be quite loose in the subsequent painting stages where I layer on color before tightening up with the detailing and accuracy required of botanical art.
On the pads, I strived to achieve pitch perfect greens for the lights and shadows. One pad actually contains all the greens in the painting, where I laid down the excess paint on my brush to build up a bit of texture. And if you look carefully at the pads, you can see the red umber paint showing through those cruel glochids!
The background color suggests the cactus’ environment and subtly circulates the eye around the painting, beginning with a warm neutral on the lower left, rising to a cool neutral on the upper right.
A final critical look at the painting was alarming! In the upper left, the pads with the Mickey Mouse-like ears were dark and loomed large and menacingly over the delicate flowers. A bit of background color swooshed over top visually pushed these pads back. All elements were now in the right tonal value relationships, working together to create a sense of depth in the painting.
A moment of drama …
While painting away, the composition continued to nag at me until finally I asked my husband to get out his circular saw and cut off the bottom 6 inches of the panel … so, so, so much better! Although at the time, all I could hear was the circular saw saying “saw-ree” to the painting. Gone were pads, flowers and pears extraneous to the story line. Like too many adjectives in a sentence, they distracted from the clarity of the main story – the growth pattern and articulation of the cactus pads to each other. Sometimes less is more.
In 2018, my Opuntia humifusa was displayed in the Art of the Plant exhibition at the Canadian Museum of Nature. This exhibition was Canada’s contribution to Botanical Art Worldwide, spearheaded by ASBA.
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Read more about this artist's work: 19th Annual